BEIRUT - The Syria branch of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has put fighting on hold in Syria while it brings in weapons seized inside neighboring Iraq, a monitoring group that tracks the violence said on Friday.

ISIL, a Sunni Islamist splinter of al-Qaida, has battled rival rebel groups in Syria for months and clashed occasionally with President Bashar Assad's forces.

But its fighters appear to hold back in Syria this week, especially in their eastern stronghold near the Iraqi border, while their Iraqi wing was making rapid military gains.